Something New
by darklydraco
Summary: DM/HP/GW with variations. After serving a three-year sentence, Draco returns to Wizarding society but can't get the Golden Pair out of his head.
1. One

**Something New**

**Rating:** M

**Pairing:** DM/HP/GW with permutations and past relationships

**Summary:** Post-war. After serving a three year term, Draco returns to Wizarding society but can't get the Golden Pair out of his head. Will be a two-shot.

**Warnings:** Slash, _ménage-a-trois, _pegging

* * *

><p>The sea is strangely calm as the Ministry boat rows across the league of dark water separating Azkaban from dry land. I'm reminded of the river Styx … only I seem to be going in reverse. Is it possible to cross the river again?<p>

Somehow I feel like I should be surprised to see them standing on the shore waiting for me. I'm not.

She hugs me. He shakes my hand. I nod stiffly, but can't think of anything to say. I haven't spoken much the last few years. And it's probably too late for anything I wanted to say, anyway.

Ginny grabs my hand, freezing cold little fingers clutching mine, the last thing I feel before the crush of apparition.

It's been three years since I heard the doors clank shut and the darkness envelop me, and here I am again, a free wizard. Or anyway, mostly free. Back in Grimmauld Place.

The house hasn't changed much since my temporary incarceration here the summer after the war, that delirious prelude to my inevitable conviction.

I permit myself the tenuous luxury to wonder, could we go back to the way things were?

I get my answer when I see the ring – a rock the size that could get caught in your hair, or gouge out an eye. It glitters on her hand and she shrugs off her cloak, and tosses it over the back of a chair. I throw mine on top of hers, covering it.

"Tea?" she calls on her way down into the kitchen, but neither of us answer because she'll make it whether we affirm or not.

Potter and I stand in the sitting room. He shuffles his feet.

"You're marrying her," I inform him unnecessarily.

Potter nods, and takes a breath like he wants to say something… but doesn't.

I take a moment to question whether this is a much improved level of discourse compared to three years in a dank cell. Then Potter bites his bottom lip and I decide I'd rather be somewhere, anywhere, other than here.

And then suddenly she returns bearing a laden tea-tray, red locks cascading down her back, eyes bright and hopeful, but what is there to hope for?

Except, "I hope you two have a wonderful life together."

Ginny's shoulders sag a little; Potter winces. "Draco…" she starts, but I don't really have anything to say, do I?

"Congratulations," I say, and drink the tea she's brought me. The sugary sweetness is just right – and isn't that a troubling thought? That she bothers to remember how I take my tea.

"You're the first to hear," Potter tells me, and sits down on the couch. Ginny drops down beside him, and I find myself sitting, too, on the old green _chaise_.

"We're announcing it on Harry's birthday tomorrow. Will you come? Please come…" she implores. I force a smile, and it's probably more like a grimace.

"I hardly think your friends and family want me there," I remark.

"We do, though," Potter says firmly. "If it weren't for you, we…"

"Bollocks," I tell him. But I concede anyway.

I stay the night in the guest room that was once, for a short time, my room. The familiarity rubs like a blister.

Breakfast is awkwardly familiar, too. Ginny is already downstairs, in a pink shift and oversized slippers, when I arrive in the kitchen. She smiles at me, places an empty cup on the table and pours out some tea – jasmine – and leaves the sugar bowl next to it. I'm still stirring when a plate of eggs and toast materialises in front of me, and I can't lie, I'm starving.

She sits down in the chair next to me, hot mug in one hand, and places the other one down on my knee. "Draco," she starts, and I try not to react to the overwhelming impulse to shove away from her… or into her. "We missed you."

I don't answer.

"We waited. We tried to wait. But everyone expected us to… and my parents… and then we had a scare last year, and Harry just… well you know how impulsive he is."

I nod. Why is she even explaining this to me? I don't need to know.

"I just need a few days to find a place to stay," I say. Her hands pulls back from my leg immediately and there is something like… pain? Maybe… in her eyes and she searches my face, but I have no idea what she's looking for.

"If that's what you want…" she starts, but my bitter bark of a laugh cuts her off. Of course it's not, I want to say, but how can I?

Upstairs, I send a few owls, back some things. I have some money – not enough to live on for long, but enough to rent a room for a few nights if I have to. I wonder if the Leaky will admit me? Knockturn's probably my best bet.

"You don't have to go," Potter tells me from the door. I don't turn around. He doesn't leave, though, but steps into the room and closes to door behind him. The air suddenly feels thick and I think that I won't ever leave at all if I don't leave right now.

He walks up, and I can feel him behind me even though he isn't even touching me, and then a broad hand slips over my shoulder and runs slowly down my arm, and I shiver, because it's been so long.

"Harry…" I whisper, a plea.

He pulls me around to face him, hands on my shoulder, eyes seeking mine, searching, and I don't know what he wants from me. I can't do this. I can't stay here and be happy for them.

It takes every ounce of will I have to wrench myself from him and walk away.

* * *

><p>I move out. It takes me three days, but I find a rat's nest little place in Knockturn Alley and hide myself away. Potter tries to help, but I'm too well hidden. I get a job stocking the shelves at Wrackwort and Sons. Their family was always loyal, if secretly, and they are willing to take me on as long as I stay in the back and don't interact with the customers. As if I'd want to.<p>

I learn fairly quickly not to go out except to work, and not to leave Knockturn Alley. The two times I try to use the floo at the Leaky I'm accosted. The second time I barely make it away and have to spend the night trying to heal my own foot, which takes forever.

Sometimes, people still spit on me.

Knockturn Alley isn't much better, though. Again and again, men solicit me, and I'm tempted, but not desperate enough.

I spend Christmas alone.

But by spring, at least, I have some money, and I can afford a better place, one that isn't right next door to the room shared by three prostitutes on alternating nights.

In my new place, I even have a window, and although I can only see the brick wall of the neighbouring building, it's still more natural light than I had.

The shower only sometimes works, but I manage.

And once it starts getting warmer, I don't spend all my mental energy casting warming charms every half-hour.

Most nights, (unless I've gone to a Muggle pub and picked up a bird, or permitted some wayward John to throw me over the furniture just to feel alive again for 23 short, painful minutes) I think about Ginny and Harry.

I imagine them together, touching and kissing and rubbing and moaning and licking and fucking until I've wrung every last drop of desire out of my spent cock and I fall asleep unsure which of the two of them I'd rather be.

* * *

><p>I haven't seen either of them since the engagement party last year, but of course they invite me to the wedding.<p>

I almost don't go. I very nearly decline the invitation, but in the end I confirm _sans_ a plus-one. I still plan to have dragon-pox, or a serious splinching accident, or be in some other way incapacitated on the day in question.

Somehow I show up all the same. I've always had a masochistic streak, I suppose.

The dump her parents live in is appalling, of course, but that's nothing new. Still, Potter's spared no expense, it seems: the lawn outside had been set up with tents and flowers and fairy lights; a string quartet plays something Muggle in a corner.

I attempt to mingle.

After the third trip jinx leaves my Bloody Mary splashed across the front of Lady Pendleton's pale blue chiffon robes, dripping gruesomely down onto her silk shoes, it becomes abundantly clear that no one wants me there.

She catches me behind the broom shed about to apparate the hell out of there, her thin, bony white fingers wrapping firmly around my wrist.

I turn. She looks up at me, rich, chocolaty brown eyes gazing up into mine. "Please stay."

I scowl, try to pull away.

"For me," she pleads. Then, "for Harry."

Small white fingers reach up and thread through my hair, pulling the bangs out of my eyes. I can smell her warmth and sweetness tinged with an edge of nervous sweat, a drop of which has beaded along her right temple.

I want to lick it off.

Instead, I close my eyes and nod once, curtly. I can feel the relief in her dropping shoulders even from here, but she still catches me by surprise when she presses a pair of warm, just-barely-damp lips to my throat and whispers, "thank you."

I linger in the kitchen, where the elves eye me warily. They are from Hogwarts, of course, and free, probably. And probably friends of Dobby's.

I feel stupidly guilty, then, thinking about the horrible night at the Manor. I handed off the bloody wands but that knife… honestly, what sort of witch throws a knife?

I leave, wander out. They'll start soon. Apparently Minister Shacklebolt's officiating. Potter would have the Minister of Magic, wouldn't he?

They've seated me with his family, rather than hers, I notice gratefully. As I slide along the transfigured bench to sit beside Andromeda Tonks and Cousin Teddy, I reflect that perhaps they could have been my family, too.

Andromeda smiles warmly. I wonder if she spoke to Mother before the execution. I look around and try to avoid catching too many hostile eyes.

That's when I see him for this first time in a year. He's standing in a Muggle tuxedo, hair brushed and somewhat tamer than usual, glasses miraculously straight, a trio of orchids pinned to his lapel. His hands are clenched, and I know he's nervous.

Then he catches my eye and smiles.

I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach. Something warm trickles down to fill cavity left behind, and I feel my own cheeks heat when I see him flushing, eyes lit up. He thought I wouldn't come.

His lips part, like he wants to mouth something to me, but then the music is starting and he jerks up a little, nervously, and turns, and so do I – we all do – and there she is.

Cream becomes her. She's a vision in raw silk, a goblin-made tiara (where is that from, I wonder?) in her bright red hair. She's never looked so beautiful in her entire life, I think to myself.

Not even rolling out of bed in nothing but a t-shirt, all legs and freckles, shivering over the lighter on the balcony of some chilly summer morning.

I chance a look at Potter, and I can see it – the daze of desire, the enchantment, all of it, mirrored in him. He glances over at me, and I see him see it in my eyes, too. Only he's standing up there and I'm here, sitting with the widows and children.

When she reaches him, she grasps his hand, and squeezes, hard.

I swear I can feel it around my throat.

She glances at the other Weasleys filling the rows, then quickly over to me – and flashes a smile like the gouge of a fingernail dragged down my spine.

Potter glances over at me, later, during the readings, just at the moment that he hooks a finger around two or three of hers. His smile is not as sharp as hers – no… more like the dull thud of a skull knocked against a cold stone wall, to be followed by hasty fingers and a bristled, probing mouth.

Why am I here? Why am I doing this to myself?

I think I can't take it any longer, but then it's over, almost.

Potter pulls out the rings. He slips one plain gold band on Ginny's hand, where it fits snugly against the engagement ring with a satisfying clink of metal on metal.

And then she slides a single band onto his hand. It looks odd – like two rings fused together – probably some pathetically symbolic gesture, to represent their dyad unity.

I want to retch. Or sneer. Or something.

Shacklebolt's low, booming voice has said the words and I cannot watch, but cannot look away as they collide, gently, yearningly, into each other.

I don't stay for the reception. What would be the point?

After they ride off on that ridiculous Hippogriff (and that was certainly _his_ ideas because _she_ would never have come up with something so absurd) I apparate to the nearest pub, install myself at the bar.

I probably shouldn't be here. Or anywhere. Really, I know better. I should go home. Or at least find a Muggle bar. Instead I decide to get thoroughly pissed.

Somewhere around the fifth or sixth scotch, someone tall and indistinguishably menacing sidles up to me, and suddenly I feel a shard of white hot pain slicing through me and someone – is it me? – screams.

Then: darkness.

* * *

><p>"Seriously, Draco? We've been gone <em>one day<em>. Not even."

She sounds tired, but also like she might be smiling. Which seems odd, but then I can't really be sure, because I'm not really sure what she's talking about.

It's morning. The hospital sheets are stiff and the lights are too bright. I still can't seem to move anything, though, so I can't really look away from her.

"I didn't ask you to come," I tell them.

Potter huffs in a corner somewhere. Ginny rolls her eyes and kisses my forehead, heads for the door, a quiet "decent cup of tea" dribbling from her lips in explanation.

Potter stands up, I think. I can't see him and I can't really move, but I can hear him over there, creaking and rustling. He still shuffles his feet like a schoolboy.

He's at the side of the bed now and I gaze up at him as imperiously as I can manage, what with the whole lying-half-naked-and-immobilised thing.

Speaking of which—

"Looks like a hate crime, as far as the Auror office can tell. You were hit with a cocktail of curses, including one to the spinal column," Potter says, but he sounds tired, not anxious, so I decide it's not as absolutely and horrendously terrifying as it sounds.

"They – the healers – put a _immobilo_ on you," he adds. "I told them not to, but you were having seizures…"

"It's fine," I say. "I'm fine." He sighs in that impossibly exasperating way. "You should go," I tell him, probably a little more coldly than I really meant to.

Ginny's just come back, a hot cup of tea in each hand. I wonder stupidly if she still takes hers with lemon, and he his with too much milk and no sugar.

"We've cancelled the trip, Draco, we're not going anywhere."

"Don't be absurd," I say. She chuckles, and I want to trip her. Potter makes that abominable sighing sound again, and I can just see out of the corner of my eye, that he's moved up to stand behind her, thick arms folding around her slight frame.

"You should go," I tell them, swallowing thickly, wishing I didn't sound so bitter.

They don't go, though. Of course not.

Ginny leads Potter to the chair I cannot see, and they sit. I close my eyes and imagine they've transformed it into loveseat. How fitting.

I can already taste the bile.

* * *

><p>Eventually a doctor comes in, explains: "you've been cursed, you'll recover, but you need bed-rest and help. Do you have someone who can take care of you?" I shake my head, no, and the doctor scribbles on her parchment. "You'll need to find a place to stay, or someone who can stay with you for a while, or you might have permanent damage." I nod, but she sees that I'm only trying to appease her. Still, she sighs, apparently trying to appease me, too.<p>

The next day, a middle-aged nurse who clearly remembers not just the second, but also the first Wizarding War, informs me curtly that I'm free to go. I hear in her tone the implied, _I hope next time they do a more thorough job_.

I'm just struggling to button up my shirt when Ginny comes in and strides over, all brisk efficiency. He cold white hands slip effortlessly between mine as she does up the last three buttons. Potter shuffles in behind her, shoulders my bag. She stands beside him and they look at me.

"I thought you had a honeymoon to be on," I remark. Potter rolls his eyes. Ginny does too.

Somehow they convince that I should not go back to my own flat, and before I can really stop them, we're back in Grimmauld place, and Ginny's unpacking my things, and I'm feeling nauseous, more than anything else, but maybe also a little grateful. But mostly nauseaus.

And then there's the fact that it shouldn't be so easy for them, should it? I don't know. Maybe it should. They were together before me, so why not after? But why is it so hard to move on, I want to ask.

Why does every women I fall into bed with have red hair? Why do all the men still wear glasses?

I suppose, for her, it's no great loss. One cock is as good as another. But Potter – what must it mean for him? To have her, but no one else?

Or maybe they have someone else. Many someone elses, plural. That's something I can't bring myself to think about.

Is it possible to be jealous of two people?

* * *

><p>I've been back at Grimmauld Place three days when I finally feel up to walking again. Ginny's been in and out of my room the whole time, and Potter's been reading me the paper in the mornings before he shuffles off the Auror school, which I've helpfully pointed out is the most absurdly predictable waste of his time imaginable. He smiles, refuses to rise to the bait.<p>

When either of them is in the room with me, I seem to manage. I still want to throw Potter into a wall sometimes, or call him Harry... and I still want to twist my fingers in Ginny's hair and pull, hard. But I manage, so long as I don't have to see them together.

It's the middle of the night, and I'm trying to quietly slip out of my room, which is across the hall from Potter's room, which is _their_ room now, I guess. I wonder vaguely if she's moved those hideous curtains out of what used to be her room.

I hate change.

The tiles on the floor of the loo are cold and the ringing of the water through the pipes echos in my skull. I can barely stand the bright lights, but it's too dark without them, and I haven't brought my wand.

My hands are still freezing as I pad back down the hall to my room in the darkness, and that's when I hear them.

Wet sounds, gasps, a growl.

The faint blue light of a low flame is flickering against the wall where the bedroom door is just barely opened. I step into the beam of light, peer in.

Skin.

The light is faint, but the blue flame throws their bodies in relief against the walls beside the bed, and suddenly my mouth is dry.

He's on his hands and knees facing away and she's behind him. Other than the rippling wave of red hair down her back, they are still: a bizarre tableau, panting heavily. I'm not sure what I'm seeing.

But then he nods, and she starts to move, and I realize when they're doing and _gods _I nearly come in my pants at the thought of it. I want a better look, want to see the thing she charmed to herself, the dildo she's using to fuck him. But all I can see are her soft hips moving rhythmically, pounding faster and faster into him. And he's groaning, and whimpering.

I can't stop myself; I reach down to press the erection now straining against my trousers. He's whining, "yes, yes," as I rub myself faster. I want to be where she is now, burying myself inside of him… making him beg, "please, please fuck me…" And _gods_ I want to be where he is, too, being filled by her, being fucked. He gasps as she pounds him, reaching around to stroke his cock, and I'm stroking mine now, hand shoved down the front of my trousers and praying they don't turn around because I can't possibly stop and _fuck_ - I explode in my hand when I see him stilling, convulsing, come spurting out onto the bedding.

Still dazed, I pull my hand out of my trousers and back away from the door. My knees are weak, and I lean against the wall outside of their room gasping in the darkness.

I can't stay here.


	2. Two

_Three Years Ago_

It's over. The war is over.

I keep hearing myself saying it, but it doesn't feel real yet. Not to me. My war isn't over.

In the jostling and weeping and wailing after the final battle, through the haze of dust and smoke and tears, I see families embrace with relief and yet we, the three of us, we sit as though frozen in slow motion, slowly swallowed up in dread.

Mother wants to slip away. Father refuses. I guess I want to go, too, but where would we go? We are outcasts, now. Our accounts frozen. Our home, a crime scene.

I gaze over at the Weasleys, huddled around the lifeless body of one of the twins, I'm not sure which one.

The press of bodies shifts slightly, then, and I catch a glimpse of her kneeling beside the boy.

Ginny.

Her brown eyes glisten with tears. She sees me see her, and doesn't turn away from me. All of her sorrow, and wrath, and hate, and love, all of it, seems to pour out over me, even from across the room, and I accept it, all of it, because…

Because she sees me, and doesn't turn away.

It's actually hours before we finally leave that place. No one seems to think we belong, but no one wants to do anything without checking with Boy Who Lived Again, who, shortly after his great victory, is again no where to be found.

I know where he's gone, though, this time. And I find him. It takes the better part of an hour to trudge across the pock-marked, corpse-strewn battle field, and even under the cover of a pretty strong disillusionment charm, I feel the constant vigilance of the mourning masses.

The shack reeks of blood and bile. I've never actually set foot inside of this place before, but I know this is where Severus is. This is where he died. Father told me about those last harrowing hours in the early morning. And when I heard Potter use the past tense "Snape _was_"… I knew.

I trudge up the stairs, following the sound of sniffling and smell of death. I don't knock, but I don't have to, Potter hears me, and before I see him he's whipped around and drawn his wand. Which is, as it turns out, my wand.

I'm not sure I want it back now, anyway.

I look away from his blazing eyes and turn to the body of my godfather. And collapse.

I wanted it to be untrue.

Only now do I realize how desperately I'd hoped to be wrong.

But there is no hope. Severus is dead. I'm sitting on my knees in a pool of his blood and I can stop myself from reaching out to touch his cold, lifeless cheek.

And in a moment of weakness, I drawn my thumb across his bottom lip, under the pretext of wiping away a smear of blood, but I know I've lingered too long there, finger trembling, and when I look up I catch Potter's eye, and I know he knows.

But I refuse to look away.

And I can see him decide to share, in that moment right after our eyes meet. A hero's solitary task becomes an expression of generosity.

And I accept.

Then I watch him silently stand and begin siphoning the blood off of the moudly old wooden floors and walls, drawing it out into a floating bubble, where it hangs in mid air.

I take out my mother's wand and begin to repair the wounds. His hands, his face, and finally, the gaping gashes at his neck. Healing charm won't work on the dead, so I stitch him up with strings of magical thread – it won't hold for long, but long enough.

Potter pours his blood back in. It's an odd thing to watch, as it drains back into his body through his mouth. I imagine, for a split second, that this will bring him back. But of course it won't. Nothing will ever bring him back.

We cast cleaning charms over the body together, and levitate him, and bring him back the castle.

Potter doesn't speak, but he doesn't seem to mind having a second pallbearer.

People look at us curiously when we walk through the doors of the Great Hall. Well, they look at Potter with awe and admiration, as always, but they look at me curiously. Or rather, hatefully.

Someone tries to hex me, but Potter glares at him and he ducks away.

We carry the body to the place where the other Heroes of the Resistance are now laid out before the many, many mourners. The wailing has stopped, mostly, replaced by a tense silence as Golden Boy and Death Eater together carry the loyally disloyal Severus Snape to join all the others who died for the Light.

And when we set him down and _finite_ the levitation spell in unison, the tension grows still greater, as people have now remembered who I am.

Potter looks up at catches my eye, and there is a fierceness in his gaze that makes me almost shrink away. But he is not angry. No. There is something else there. A promise, perhaps.

He nods.

I nod.

And then the silence turns to a wave of murmuring and talking and renewed weeping as the crowd embraces their Hero and I slip away again to find my parents, awkwardly displaced amid the weeping masses, sitting stiffly together on a bench at what was once the Slytherin table.

* * *

><p>I don't see Potter again for another two weeks. We have been staying with the Barnabaal's in their summer estate in Wales, waiting for news and watching the trials. Some errant clans of Death Eaters are still on the loose, and so too are vigilante groups hunting them down with the blessing of Shacklebolt's cobbled-together Ministry.<p>

We try to stay out of the way.

When the Aurors finally do come, no one is surprised. Except perhaps, surprised that it took them so long.

Mother struggles not to cry. Father stands and stiff and defiant. I suppose I'm somewhere in between.

The charges against me are much less egregious, but I hardly expect leniency.

We are brought to separate cells to await our pre-trial hearings. It's another three days before I see my parents again, and that is the last time I ever see them.

I'm standing across the courtroom listening to the Judge, flanked by members of the War and Reparations Council. They are to be held at Azkaban until their trials at the end of the summer.

Mother weaps. Father stares blankly.

And then they call me.

Only now, as I trudge, shackled and bound, to the horrifying spotlight of the witness chair, do I see him.

Potter.

He's sitting stiff-jawed, eyes blazing, beside Granger, Weasley, and… Ginny. Granger is shuffling a million papers of notes and I have no idea what they are doing here as the Judge begins to read out the charges against me and Granger begins scribbling them down.

The next hour or so is a blur of heated argument and hushed whispers.

It takes me a while to realize that they are here for me. Potter speaks about my mother, speaks about that night at the Manor, struggles to overcome his natural ineloquence, and when that fails, Granger takes over with a barrage of legal precedents from the first Wizarding War.

And when that, too, seems likely to fail, Ginny stands up and talks about life at Hogwarts during the war. About the times (had there really been so many?) that I had looked the other way, failed to report, failed to reprimand, refused to curse her, and her posse of student _resistance_.

Until now, I'd not realized she knew.

But when I catch her eye mid-sentence as she recalls the night I caught her sneaking through the ever shifting doorway to the Room and said nothing, I see that she remembers everything.

And then, finally, she appeals to the memory of Severus Snape.

Which prompts Potter to find his tongue again, as he explains that Severus, too, was mistrusted, but that he, Potter, would vouch for me just as Dumbledore had once vouched for Severus.

The court confers with itself, as the on-lookers hold a collective breath hovering in the air.

And then, "Draco Malfoy is released into the custody of Mr. Harry James Potter, pending his trial, scheduled for August 1st."

A stunned silence descends.

Released?

Into… custody?

But Potter seems relieved, as though this is what he'd hoped for. Or more than he'd hoped for. He hugs Granger and Weasley, and then takes Ginny's hand. But she isn't looking at him, she is looking at me, smiling faintly, and I try to smile back.

What have they done?

And what now?

* * *

><p>Grimmauld Place.<p>

I'd never seen the inside of that home, but I'd heard about it my whole life. Mother spoke about it with a fond fear – that ancestral seat of the Black Family.

I think I'm glad it's gone to Potter now.

Granger and Weasley have shacked up in a downstairs suite near the kitchen, apparently, but they spend most of the day at the Burrow, from what I gather.

I've been given a room on the second floor, across from Potter, and down the hall from Ginny.

He broods and sleeps. She smokes.

I join her.

The first night, I catch her stealing up the stairs to what was once Sirius Black's room, in little more than a t-shirt and panties. She sees me watching her, but doesn't stop.

So I follow her up, up, up to the attic bedroom. Her cold little feet pad softly across the smooth, worn wood floors until she reaches the window, and expertly flips the latch and climbs out onto the little ledge.

She sits with one knee pulled up to her chest, and the other leg dangling down over the roof of that anciet wreck.

I climb up and join her, because she doesn't seem to want me not to.

And that's when she pulls a worn pack of muggle cigarettes out of her bra puts one in her mouth, and offers me one, a quizzical, almost confessional look on her face.

I take the cigarette, though I've never smoked before.

She lights hers with her wand and then directs me to touch the tip of mine to the tip of hers in a strangely intimate gesture.

I inhale and immediately burst into a coughing fit.

A coughing fit that turns to laughter.

Not loud laughter. Quiet, hardly worthy of being called laughter, really, except that I haven't laughed in so, so, long, and I find I can't stop.

And now she's laughing, too. Giggling absurdly. And tears are streaming down my face, and I take a more dignified drag, and gaze at her warm brown eyes, and suddenly, neither of us is laughing anymore.

She doesn't kiss me that night. But she will, two or three nights later.

Her lips are softer than I'd imagined.

When she parts them, and my tongue touches hers for the first time, I feel the thrill of something unfamiliar and overpowering, but I can't help wondering what _he_ would think, knowing we two were here together, without him.

And then I draw her tongue into my mouth and forget everything else but _this_.


	3. Three

Part Three

It takes me a few minutes the following morning to remember what happened. Everything from the past and present is blurring together. That summer, and this one, running together like watercolours with too much water, or in my case, too little sleep.

But I saw them, I remember it now. The mere recollection leaves me gasping, and hard, and wanting. I wonder if I can get myself off quickly and quietly enough before one or the other of them comes in to check on me before work, but just as I snake one hand down into my already sticky pyjama pants, I can hear Ginny's soft footsteps on the landing, tiptoeing down the stairs.

I can't do this anymore. But I can't stop myself.

I slip out of bed and make my way down the stairs, still slow and sore from the attack. The impact as each foot lands on the step below still sends painful shudders through my body.

I reach the top of the second flight of stairs, the ones that lead down into the kitchen. They've torn out the upper half of the wall at the far end, and dug slanting ditches to let light into the broad windows set where the stone walls now end, at about shoulder height. They've redone the counters and replaced the kitchen table: exchanged the dark, gnarled old wood of past generations with an airy birch and stainless steel. It looks… grown up. And muggle.

And Ginny… looks like she belongs here. She's wearing a sleeveless, fitted shirt and a pair a pale green underwear, her little bare feet curled onto their sides so that the softer inner soles don't touch the cold tile floor.

Her hair is backlit by the morning light, and it glows like a beacon. A warning.

She hears me, then, and turns her smile on me like a ray of something bright and nearly painful.

I'm blinded as I step down into the kitchen and try to contain the urge to touch her, to take her.

But I cannot. When she turns to face me, her back resting against the counter, knife and fruit abandoned, I can't help myself.

I reach out to her, press my hips against her, run my fingers behind her ears and up into her hair, let my lips follow, kissing and nibbling along the length of her milky white neck. I feel her shiver at my touch, feel her grasping at the front of my shirt, pulling closer, the smell of sweat and soap and come mingling on her skin.

I want her. It's overpowering. It's dangerously intoxicating. The morning light illuminates us, there, encircled in a single, wide and warming beam, surrounded by the sparkling dust in the air around us.

Her lips brush against my cheek, and I move to catch her warm wet mouth in mine.

It is sweet, and dark, and perfect here.

But I cannot.

Not knowing she can never be mine.

No.

I pull away from her slowly, and she looks up at me, dizzy, dreamy, and vague. She brushes slim white fingers across her pink lips.

I want to suck them into my mouth.

Instead, I go.

* * *

><p>That night she is late to dinner. She's been out, working, and Potter has come home earlier than usual. He and I sit across the wooden table in the kitchen, a pot of beef and barley stew between us, and a couple of butterbeers open on the table.<p>

I wince slightly as I reach to serve myself another bowl, and Potter looks up, concerned.

"It still hurts?"

"Only sometimes," I answer, momentarily unsure what, exactly, I'm lying about.

We eat in silence, and I feel like he's watching me. Does he know? Did she tell him? Will he banish me when he finds out?

I shudder to imagine going back to my cold little apartment in Knockturn Alley. But I've been here for weeks, now.

I've lost my appetite. I stand and carry my dish to the sink, then rest my hands against the counter and sigh.

"I should probably go."

I can hear him frowning, his mouth full of food. Then understanding dawns and he swallows too quickly, and coughs, before and standing up and blurting: "No."

"I can't stay here," I tell him, and turn to catch his eyes, and try to transmit the pain, the agonizing longing.

He understands, I think.

But instead of letting me go, he reaches out to me, places a hand on my shoulder, then lets it slip down to my lower back.

My breath hitches.

He doesn't understand. He can't possibly understand.

I press back against his hand, because I can't help myself.

When I feel him letting go, the ground collapses underneath me.

"Draco," he says quietly. An apology?

"Don't," I whisper back. And then I brush past him and out of the room. Because I can't stay in there one moment longer without grasping for him like a grasped for her.

How can I go on like this?

* * *

><p>Three days later, it happens again.<p>

I catch them, sort of, for an instant. He's leaning back against the wall of their bedroom, and she's on her tip-toes, calves straining, reaching up to whisper something in his ear. He smiles, and looks in that moment years younger.

I turn away, trudge up the stairs to the third floor bedroom where she and I used to hide, and smoke, and swoon.

I find the pack of muggle cigarettes she's secreted up here, tucked into a box on the bookshelf next to the window.

I light it with her muggle lighter and sit there, smoking in evening light. It's not until I've finished one, and waited another ten minutes in the stillness watching the sunset, that I hear her footsteps on the landing.

"You found them," she says through a smile, and climbs up onto the ledge beside him. Her cheeks and chest are flushed. They've been fucking. I know it. I can smell it.

She flushes even more, then, as though she could read my mind.

But she lights a cigarette anyway, dangling her bare legs over the edge of the windowsill, and her hair blows around her eyes. I watch her take a long drag, releasing the smoke from of her mouth softly, letting it float away from her parted lips, then as she lick them until they are moist and glistening.

I can't…

I can't stop myself. My hands reach for her hair, my mouth for her mouth, and she take another drag, then blows it through my lips and I breathe it in, sucking it down into my lungs, breathing out as we kiss.

And now my hands are everywhere, searching, probing, as we stumble off of the ledge. The cigarette is tossed and forgotten as we struggle toward the unused bed, Sirius Black's childhood bed, and I push her shirt up and let my mouth explore the warm, sweat-moistened creases under her breasts, trying to draw out and separate the smell of her, and the smell of him.

Because I can smell him on her… and as my mouth travels further down over the fine soft hair below her navel, and further down to the swollen lips, I can smell his come, mixed in her wetness.

I lap it up.

All of it.

My tongue thrusts deep inside her and I can taste him there, his come, thick and heady and so different, so distinct from the sweet, acrid taste of her. And I want both. I want all of it.

I move up to kiss her again, letting her explore my mouth, sharing what I've found.

"I can taste him on your tongue," she whispers into my mouth, and I growl, because I'm reduced to mere animalism now. My cock is achingly hard, and leaking, and I want… I want…

"I want you inside of me," she moans. "Now…" then, "_please…_"

And I'm lost. I'm powerless to resist. Not just to be with her again, after so long, after years of wanting and waiting… but to be with him thereby somehow, too.

I thrust into her knowing he's just done the same, knowing the walls inside of her are coated with him, knowing that, when I come, it will mix with his inside of her, together, again.

It doesn't take me long to finish. I imagine she's relieved, but who knows?

Afterward, she lingers in the bed with me, sharing an illicit indoor cigarette passed between sticky fingers and slick lips.

Night veils us as the swirls of smoke drift out the open window.

* * *

><p><em>Three Years Earlier<em>

Potter is onto us. I'm sure of it. He knows, he must, because when we descend the stairs this morning, having smoked and kissed, and fondled on the windowsill, he looks hurt.

I try not to sneer.

It's his house, afterall.

And his girl.

Sort of.

He starts spending time in my room, and I'm sure it's because he wants to keep an eye on me. Ginny gives us a wide berth when we're together, because more often than not we erupt into heated quarrels.

Afterwards, he sulks. And I… well I sulk, too. But with more dignity, I like to think.

Ginny and I, we struggle to find stolen moments alone to kiss, and touch - pressed behind closed doors and hidden in dark stairwell, but it's never long enough, because Potter is always around the next corner, or Weasley, or Granger. It's surprisingly crowded in that old house. And I feel like everyone is watching me.

I can't blame them.

And then one morning, Ginny sneaks into my room. It's early, I'm still half-asleep, when I feel her cold little knees pressing into my back and I turn to her, raise myself up over her as she slides underneath me, smiling wickedly, and reaching to bring my mouth to hers.

And then we hear footsteps by the door, and Potter barges in, brooms in hand, saying "Malfoy, up for a match?"

It takes him a few seconds to recognize that I'm not asleep, and not alone.

And a few more seconds to recognize that it's Ginny in bed with me.

"Oh. S-sorry," he mutters, and ducks out. Ginny looks worried, makes excuses, and leaves.

I don't see him again for the next few days. He doesn't come bother me in my room, isn't around every corner, doesn't come down for supper.

I'm not sure whether I miss him, exactly. But I notice that he isn't there.

I imagine he's sulking, but that doesn't ring true, really.

And then Ginny leaves for the Burrow, to spend the weekend with her family. And Weasley and Granger are visiting her Muggle family, to announce their engagement.

And I'm still on house arrest pending my trial. And Potter hates being mobbed by adoring fans (or so he says) so he never goes out anyway.

Which means it's just the two of us in the old house. And suddenly it doesn't seem that crowded anymore. Not at all.

He shoves past me as I'm leaving the restroom, but I ignore him. When he shoves past me again on my way out of the kitchen, I contain the urge to shove him back. Barely.

But it goes on like that. A whole day of being knocked around. Until, finally:

"What do you want, Potter?" I bark, exasperated.

"I want you to get out of my fucking way, Malfoy," he snaps back, wand raised and eyes blazing.

I'm unarmed, though, since the arrest. But I don't back down.

"Fuck you, Potter. All day with this. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He inhales, like he's going to say something, but then closes his mouth and clenches his jaw, storming past me and out into the hallway.

I kick the old kitchen table, then swear at my throbbing toe.

He avoids me for the rest of the night, but the next day, as I turn the corner inro the sitting room, he pushes past me, and I lose my balance, teetering, as though my entire weight, my entire being is trying to decide whether to stand, or fall.

I knock into the wall, but instead of letting him go, I grab him by the arm and spin him around so that he is facing me.

"What?" he growls.

I glare at him, trying to see through the messy brown bangs and the mask of hatred, but all I see is anger. And maybe hurt.

And maybe… something else.

I realize suddenly, he's looking at me, too.

He's searching for something in my eyes, I can see it, but I don't know what he's looking for, much less whether it's there to be found.

Something strange is passing between us. Something… I can't quite grasp. I'm reaching for it, just behind the veil of my awareness… just under the surface… but I can't recognize it… this strangeness.

I turn away from him, break the seal of eye-contact.

But as I walk back up the stairs to my room, I feel the faint, dizzying curiosity, like a swarm of gnats, buzzing around me, and I can't think about anything but the look in his eyes as he gazed into mine.

What was he looking for? And… If he'd kept looking… if I'd not turned away… what might he have found?

* * *

><p>AN: I wrote this entire chapter while listening to Strobe by Deadmau5, on repeat. Hence the rising and falling erotic archs throughout.<p> 


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